Prints, scans, and faxes, including over a network. Standalone copier and fax. Scans to and prints from USB memory key.

Cons

Although speed and output quality are suitable for a small office or workgroup, they're no better than par.

Bottom Line

The Dell 2335dn laser MFP offers a useful mix of speed, output quality, and capability for a small office, but nothing to make it stand out from the crowd.

Think of the Dell 2335dn as the less expensive, less flashy cousin of the Dell 2355dn Multifunction Mono Laser Printer ($599.99 direct, 3 stars) that I recently reviewed. It lacks the color touch screen control panel that makes the 2355dn stand out from the crowd, but it offers similar speed, output quality, and paper handling. The combination makes the 2335dn just as appropriate as the 2355dn for a small office or workgroup. And for the cost-conscious, the lower price fully makes up for having to use a traditional front panel with buttons and a monochrome LCD instead of a color touch screen.

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The 2335dn offers everything you'd expect in a full-function MFP for a small office. It can print and fax fromas well as scan toa PC over a USB or network connection, work as a standalone fax machine and copier, and print from as well as scan to a USB memory key. Important conveniences include a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF), which supplements the flatbed to let you scan stacks of letter- and legal-size pages. Note too, that the ADF can duplex, turning each page over for copying or scanning. However, it can't duplex for faxing.

Paper handling is suitable for most small offices, with a 250-sheet drawer, 50-page multi-purpose tray, and a built-in duplexer standard. If you need more capacity, you can get a second 250-sheet tray ($139.99 direct), for a total of 550 sheets, which should be more than enough in most cases.

Setup and Speed
Setting up the 2335dn was absolutely standard. I installed it on a wired network and ran my tests from a system running Windows Vista. The speed turned out to be appropriate for a small office, but well short of impressive.

Dell rates the 2335dn at 35 pages per minute (ppm), which should be close to the speed you'll see when printing text files with no graphics or photos. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic's hardware and software for timing), the printer managed an effective 9.6 ppm, essentially tying the 2355dn's 9.1 ppm. (Differences of much less than 1 ppm on our tests aren't significant for lasers.)

As a point of reference, the Editors' Choice, and somewhat less expensive, Brother MFC-8480DN ($400 street, 4 stars) was faster, at 10.6 ppm. So although the 2335dn is acceptably fast for a small office, you can get faster speed from less expensive competition.

Output Quality
As with the 2335dn's speed, its output quality is best described as good enough but nothing to get excited about. Text, graphics, and photo quality are all within the typical ranges for mono laser MFPs, with text and graphics at the high end of the range and photos at the low end.

Text quality is appropriate for any use short of high-quality desktop publishing. The printer even does a reasonably good job with small font sizes. You shouldn't have any complaints about it for standard business documents.

Graphics quality is at the top of the tight range where the vast majority of mono laser MFPs fall, making it good enough for any internal business use. Photo quality falls at the bottom of a similarly tight range, which still makes it good enough to print recognizable photos from Web pages. Depending on your level of perfectionism, you may or may not consider it good enough for client newsletters and the like.

What all these features add up to is a workmanlike printer with acceptable speed and output quality plus all the essential MFP features, with the ability to scan, copy, and fax. If you want the additional convenience of color touch screen controlsand are willing to pay for themyou should be looking at the Dell 2355dn instead. And if you're on a tight budget, you'll want to look at the Brother MFC-8480DN too. However you look at it though, the Dell 2335dn offers the right balance of features to make it a more than reasonable choice for a small office.

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, monitors, large-screen displays, projectors, scanners, and digital cameras), storage (both magnetic and optical), and word processing. He is a recognized expert on printers, well known within the industry, and has been a judge for...
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